I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Birganj, Parsa Distrct, Nepal, from February 2002 to April 2004, and served as an English Language Teacher Trainer in the group N/194, the last Peace Corps group to COS in country before the program in Nepal was suspended in September 2004. I blogged extensively about my Peace Corps experience in Nepal as it was happening. My tag line is the best introduction to my site, stating "Scott was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal from 02/2002 to 04/2004. Most days it was exciting; others, however . . . ."

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I started my Peace Corps application in July 2001. After meeting with a Peace Corps recruiter, I was told I would be going to Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, or Thailand. I wavered between Mongolia and Nepal. A couple weeks later, when I came home from work, my invitation letter from the Peace Corps was waiting for me. Nepal it would be. I was excited. I read about Nepal and Hinduism. I created a Web site. And I still had months before my departure.

My complete DOS statement is available in the documents section of my Peace Corps experience blog. While the DOS statement is the official record of my service in Nepal, I feel as though its odd third-person language and focus on numbers doesn't represent the breadth and scope of the affect my work had on me personally and on those with whom I worked, whether for a day or a month, during my two years in Nepal.

cross-cultural understanding, Mr. Scott Allan Wallick was invited into Peace Corps service. He
was assigned for his first year of service to teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the
primary level and for his second year worked as an English Language Teacher Trainer (ELTT)

My blog, The Peace Corps Experience of Scott Allan Wallick, began in January 2002, about one month before my departure to Nepal. At first, I uploaded static HTML files via FTP to a private Web server. By June 2002, though, I moved my content to the service Blogger, which was bought by Google in February 2003. I mention this because Google offered the entire Blogger service for free. I had subscribed to the original (and then defunct) for-pay Blogger service. Google sent Blogger hooded sweatshirts in lieu of paid fees. I was impressed when my hooded sweatshirt arrived at post three months later. After returning to the United States, the whole content of my blog was migrated from Blogger to a personal server running WordPress.

In December 2004, in short due to pressure from the Peace Corps office in Washington, DC, a senior official at Peace Corps/Nepal contacted me regarding my blog and asked me to remove a number of posts, which were provided by title. I complied, removed the posts, and later, after I completed my service successfully, reposted those articles. I wrote generally about the incident in Blogging in the Peace Corps.

Later, this incident was featured on Peace Corps Online on February 24, 2004, which did not help with my goal of getting through my last two months of service without an 'political' conflicts with the either Peace Corps/Nepal or Washington.

I posted my complete packing list and then, a few months in to my Peace Corps service, added a packing list addendum. My main thoughts being to take the least amount of clothes and more items that might be hard to get or replace in country.

The documents section contains a few documents from when I was a teacher trainer. I should stipulate that these documents are posted here as-was, i.e., I haven’t edited or revised them after the fact, even though now I might know better. The documents are licensed with the GNU Free Documentation License.

After getting married in Darjeeling, India, in June 2004, my wife and I arrived in the United States in September 2004. I began working as an editor, am still an avid photographer, and return to Nepal and India regularly. I have contributed to the Friends of Nepal, Peace Corps Writers, and the America-Nepal Friendship Society. I also frequently participate at Peace Corps recruiting events in the New York City area on behalf of the New York Peace Corps Regional Office.

Note: The contents and opinions expressed in The Peace Corps Experience of Scott Allan Wallick do not represent official positions, views, intentions, et cetera, of the United States Peace Corps nor the government of the United States.